• The Changing Role of Librarians and Information Specialists
• The Web as an Information Delivery Medium
• The State of Push Technology
• The State of Pull Technology
• Push vs. Pull
• Tips for Finding More Information About this Topic
• Bibliography

The Changing Role of Librarians and Information Specialists

As corporate libraries and information centers depend increasingly on electronic information delivery systems, the role of librarians and information specialists is being irrevocably changed. A two-year study by the American Association of Law Libraries' Special Committee on the Renaissance of Law found that, although electronic information delivery is permeating every aspect of librarianship, the technological revolution is still in its early stages (Ebbinghouse 1996). Meanwhile, librarians continue to face challenges of stagnating budgets, spiraling library material costs, increasing demand for foreign materials, and increasing demands for additional services and alternative formats.

Despite being pressed financially, corporate libraries are increasingly depended upon to provide the strategic information necessary to support their companies’ business decisions (Dykman 1996), and that information must be provided better and faster than it is by the company's competitors. Furthermore, according to Dr. C.K. Prahalad, the corporate librarian has a pivotal role to play in helping a company to develop a vision of the future (Information Advisor 1994). In order to create that vision, a company must collect and synthesize information from a wide variety of sources. But in order for librarians to play this pivotal role in a company's future, they must shift their self-perception from being a custodian of books and periodicals to being active sources for accessing information. In essence, the role of the information specialist may ultimately be to search for information relevant to the company and then deliver it to appropriate executives before the executive asks for the information (Small Helfer 1997).

At the same time, new technologies are shifting some of the searching from librarians and information specialists to each employee's desktop. Thus, librarians' and information specialists' roles may be varied in the future: helping users to refine their search strategies and become "information gathering independent," on the one hand, and venturing out on the information frontiers to find information vital to the corporation's future endeavors, on the other.

The Web as an Information Delivery Medium

The World Wide Web is becoming the most common means of information delivery to the corporate end-user desktop. The market for Internet/intranet information is undeniably growing, with sales expected to reach some $5.4 billion, or 20% of total business/professional online services sales, by the year 2000, according to a study of Fortune 500 companies by Cowles/Simba Information (Electronic Information Report 1997).

However, the Web, the basis for most current information delivery and search engines used to locate information on the Internet, is still in its adolescence as an information delivery medium (Miller 1996). Although the Web is close to being the Holy Grail that the industry has sought for 20 years or more, it suffers from two fatal flaws: overwhelming quantity and underwhelming quality. Librarians and information specialists have the experience and the skills to show how the Web's content can best be delivered to solve problems, but those in the information industry have so far not participated in shaping the Web.

The State of Push Technology

As the Web is becoming more common as a means for electronic information gathering on the individual employee’s desktop, what is known as "push technology" is becoming more popular. Push technology automatically delivers data to the user based on pre-defined information profiles or filters. Although push technology industry leaders at the 1997 Push Technology Summit in San Diego, California, presented little consensus on the future of the technology, some 74% believe they will be receiving more than 25% of their Internet information via push technology by the year 2002 (Willmot 1997).

Push technology has been around for awhile under the names of "current awareness" or SDI (Selective Dissemination of Information) services and has used fax or e-mail as its delivery medium, but the Web browser interface has since proved more convenient for many corporations (Streeter 1997). While a large corporation may have incompatible e-mail systems, corporate intranets enable companies to create their own "channels" to send out information such as product delivery schedules or human-resources-department memos. However, this broadcast model has the drawback of taking up valuable bandwidth, especially when data is broadcast from the Internet rather than within the corporate intranet.

Push technology generally suffers from the same shortcomings as the Web. The filtering systems that currently exist do little to provide needed information within users’ time constraints. Users want the process of being kept up-to-date to take no longer than about 10 minutes, according to Individual Inc.'s Paul Pinella (Paul 1997). Another limitation of push technology is that it currently depends on profiles that are too crude to do much more than fill up e-mail boxes with data that by its sheer volume has been transformed from useful information into useless files. The filters of push products still need to developed further so that they can deliver information on the basis of a refined and dynamic set of interrelated properties about the user (Dodge 1997). The current filters are most appropriate for users, such as salespeople, for whom it is relatively easy to identify the information that is important.

Despite its limitations, the current state of push technology still has advantages over earlier forms of current awareness services. Information is received from continuous, real-time news feeds instead of relying on newspaper clippings. Software can customize the sorting and organization of the information and create profiles for each individual in an organization. Customized profiles can be created by various means, such as from table-of-contents databases (Dysart and Jones 1995).

The State of Pull Technology

Although push technology has become popular with the spread of Web technology and especially corporate intranets, the traditional proactive search methods, now dubbed "pull" technology, are making inroads into the Web platform. On the pull side, a number of companies have recently developed search engines intended expressly for corporate intranets (Hibbard 1997). The new search engines are able to search more than just Hypertext Markup Language and text files; they can search files created with popular productivity suites, as well as searching various file systems.

Push vs. Pull

Despite push technology's recent popularity, the question is not whether the push model is superior to the pull model, but rather when to use one rather than the other. Users of push technology may obtain leads from the information received and then search elsewhere for more in-depth information. Ultimately, the value of push products is in their currency, and the value of pull products is in their ability to provide the user with the depth and breadth of information the corporation needs to make business decisions. The main shortcoming for both the push and pull models is needing to know where to look for and find relevant information. Thus both models are useless without the expertise and knowledge that librarians and information specialists bring to the process.

The corporate librarian's task in the midst of the riptide of technological change is more than just to survive. The opportunities to affect the future course of one's company have never been greater, but in order to do so corporate librarians and information specialists must become involved in the change around them and partner with others within the company, from the MIS department to top corporate executives.

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Bibliography

Dodge, John. "How Much Useful Info is at Your Fingertips?" PC Week 17 Feb. 1997: 3. PROMT. Online. InSite Pro. 14 July 1997.

Dykman, Elaine K. "Planning More Powerful Ways to Deliver Information to the Desktop." Online Sep.-Oct. 1996: 20+. Trade & Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 14 July 1997.

Dysart, Jane I., and Rebecca J. Jones. "Tools for the Future: Recreating or 'Renovating' Information Services Using New Technologies." Computers in Libraries Jan. 1995: 16+. Trade & Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 14 July 1997.

Ebbington, Carol. "Renaissance Librarians." Searcher Nov.-Dec. 1996: 8+. Trade and Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 14 July 1997.

Hibbard, Justin. "Pull Technology Fights Back." Computerworld 26 May 1997: 55+. Trade & Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 16 July 1997.

"Interview: C.K. Prahalad on the Information Professional's Role in Visioning the Future." Information Advisor Oct. 1994: 1+. Trade & Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 14 July 1997.

"The Intranet and the Business Libraries: An Interview With Mary Corcoran." Information Advisor June 1996: 6+. Trade & Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 14 July 1997.

"Intranet Information Sales Projected to Reach $5.4 Billion in 2000." Electronic Information Report 4 Apr. 1997: np. PROMT. Online. InSite Pro. 14 July 1997.

Miller, Tim. "The Web Reaches Adolescence: Our Last Opportunity to Influence its Growth." Information Today Dec. 1996: 1+. Trade & Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 15 July 1997.

Paul, Lauren Gibbons. "Push Me, Pull You." PC Week, 13 Jan. 1997: 105. PROMT. Online. InSite Pro. 14 July 1997.

Small Helfer, Doris. "Not Your Traditional Librarian Anymore!" Searcher, May 1997: 66+. Trade & Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 14 July 1997.

Streeter, April. "Push Technology Automates Web Surfing for Info Junkies." MacWEEK, 31 Mar. 1997: 27+. Trade & Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 15 July 1997.

Willmott, Don. "Pushed, Pulled, Confused." PC Magazine 24 June, 1997: 30. Trade & Industry Database. Online. InSite Pro. 15 July 1997.

About the Author

David W. Powis-Dow, an Abstractor-Editor in the Computer Publications Database Department, joined Information Access Co. in 1992. He previously worked in IAC’s PROMT Department, and worked in the advertising and publishing fields prior to joining IAC. Comments to the author should be directed to David_Powis-Dow@iacnet.com.

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